Story at a glance
- Linda Dominguez filed a lawsuit against the New York Police Department alleging she was misgendered and mistreated by officers.
- She will receive $30,000 in a settlement that also requires the NYPD to retrain officers on transgender rights.
- The NYPD Patrol Guide now considers gender identity and expression when referring to “gender.”
A transgender Latina activist was awarded $30,000 last week in a settlement with the New York Police Department that requires the law enforcement agency to retrain officers on the very guidelines she says were violated in her case.
“I never want anyone to go through the abuse I experienced from people sworn to protect me,” Linda Dominguez said in a statement reported by The Associated Press. “As an advocate for my community, I couldn’t let this go.”
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The 45-year-old cosmetologist was arrested and charged with “false personation” after presenting officers questioning her with two IDs, one with her name at birth and another with her corrected name. After guards misgendered and deadnamed her — calling her by her previous name — the charges were eventually dismissed and Dominguez filed a lawsuit through the New York Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU’s LGBT and HIV Project.
As part of the settlement, NYPD has agreed to retrain officers on changes made to the patrol guide in 2012 to respect the rights of transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
These include prohibiting “discourteous or disrespectful remarks” about a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity and expression, conducting searches to determine a person’s gender and referring to transgender people by their names, honorifics and pronouns even when they don’t match legal identification. The guide also redefined gender to include gender identity and expression, extending rights related to one’s gender even when it is different from their sex assigned at birth.
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“The steps the NYPD will take in connection with this settlement reaffirm the Department’s ongoing commitment to improving relations between the police and communities officers serve,” said the city’s law department in a statement.
A 2017 report cited in the complaint “found clear gaps in the NYPD’s implementation of and training on the [2012 Patrol Guide] revisions” and showed that over four years, only six of 77 precincts received the training. The settlement follows another earlier this month that forced the NYPD to change its policy on religious head coverings in mugshots.
“What happened to Linda was 100% unlawful and wrong, and I don’t think they could ever make an argument that it wasn’t,” Bobby Hodgson, a senior staff attorney at the NYCLU, told Gothamist. “It takes more than one lawsuit to change the culture of an organization like the NYPD. But it’s the constant pressure that has to happen in order to make things a little bit better on the ground right now.”
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